


Why'd You Come?

by schneefusslanti



Category: Falsettos - Lapine/Finn, Legally Blonde - Hach/O'Keefe/Benjamin
Genre: Crossover, Gen, jason from falsettos is emmett forrest, major character death is just a mention but still just in case
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 02:48:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15233679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schneefusslanti/pseuds/schneefusslanti
Summary: Though Emmett explains to Elle that he "grew up in the Roxbury slums with [his] mom and a series of bums", there's a lot more to his past.





	Why'd You Come?

“Hang on, you came out here to follow your ex-boyfriend and get him back, and it just happened that he attends Harvard Law?” Emmett asked Elle with a confused look, “That’s the weirdest reason I’ve ever heard of someone coming all the way out here.”

“Okay, why’d you come then?”

“I grew up in the Roxbury slums with my mom and a series of bums. Guys who showed me all the ways a man could fail,” Emmett explained. Almost the same way that he’d explained his life story when applying to college: true enough to get accepted to school, true enough for people to understand that he’d lived in the area for an extended period of time, true enough for people who only needed to know him as the recent graduate/teaching assistant in Callahan’s class.

It just wasn’t the whole truth.

Yes he could say that he was from the Roxbury area (or just Boston for the out-of-state people); that _was_ the place that he attended high school and no one else cared to ask further.

Emmett Forrest, or according to his school and forms, J. Emmett Forrest-Blumenfeld, was originally from New York. And truth be told, he probably would have stayed in New York had his family not been broken and uprooted.

XXX

Back then, his name was Jason.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Breaking his family up once should have been more than enough, when his parents divorced and his father ran off with his “friend” Whizzer, only for the guy to run away after ten (or was it nine) months of a seemingly terrible relationship. Over two and a half years passed until his family finally appeared stable again: not the picture-perfect family of mother, father, child, and dog, but a cobbled-together unlikely tight-knit family composed of mother, stepfather slash psychiatrist, father who ended up being less of a jerk, father’s ex-ex-lover who despite early rocky beginnings felt like family too, and the lesbian godmothers from next door. For just a while, it seemed that everything would be all right.

But of course that wasn’t going to last long, when the virus (now which finally had a name for the past 10 or so years) claimed Whizzer and later his father, slowly at first and then all at once. He was glad that photos existed before the virus, before the too-sterile hospital environment, before they wasted away to memories and headstones.

And yet that wasn’t enough.

He’d known about his now-stepfather Mendel seeing his father as a client early in the divorce when Whizzer was around the house for the first time, but he didn’t know that there were more patients coming in for the same reason as his father, re: same-sex attraction. Not until where Mendel reported his office had been broken into and multiple boxes of patient files stolen, and a corner of the paper two days later outing a list of patients who, according to Dr Charlotte, had no privacy protection from the government.

“But that’s never happened to dad and Whizzer or any of the other patients in the hospital!”

“That’s only because the hospital I work at itself has regulations for patient privacy; there aren’t any laws with the state or the country,” explained his godmother. “And unfortunately your dad was lucky that it was your mom that walked in on him and Whizzer, if it was the police he could have been arrested.”

No protection for the government. Mendel seemed to know it too, looking like he’d expected the letter from the department of licensing and regulations rescinding his license to practice within the state of New York, numbly opening and dropping it before retreating upstairs to silently break down.

Through a few connections with friends from school and a still-valid license in Massachusetts (where Mendel had gone to med school back in the day), he, his mother, and Mendel were able to pack for Boston and a house affordable enough in the area, even after dealing with two funerals in less than two years. And okay, it wasn’t as nice as their home back in New York, Mendel had a longer commute route to his new practice site, and the area was a bit shady, but they managed. So long as they stayed indoors after dark and ignored the police cars clearly parked next door arresting the constantly rotating cast of neighbors, it was fine. They had a place to start over, a place for a stable job, a place for a(n almost) stable four years of high school.

He didn’t really have any hesitation choosing what he wanted to study in university after high school.

Not after seeing what happened to his family.

Not after being told that there was no law protecting his stepfather’s patients.

Not after seeing on TV that the courts decided that had his father still been alive with Whizzer they could have still been arrested.

Not after hearing stories of his godmothers getting rejected from restaurants because they didn’t look straight enough and then getting into more than enough fights in the parking lot, only to be told they were “asking for it.”

He could either try to fight people with his hands and legs (and possibly get arrested for assault), or he could fight people in court.

And on the first day of university, he said his name was Emmett.

XXX

Emmett hadn’t told anyone his story; he’d BS’ed the most fake-honest sounding personal statement about a “family friend” dying at the hospital due to messy paperwork and was honestly surprised that Harvard Law even accepted him. None of his classmates knew since he’d always have to leave campus early for work to cover rent; none of his coworkers knew since he never really talked to them. His boss didn’t know either; though to be fair, when would Callahan ever care.

And here was a person asking why he’d come to law school. Maybe she might hear the story sometime in the future, but now was not the time yet. For now, he just needed to get her back on track in class.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             


End file.
